Post by jadedsage on Nov 14, 2004 21:32:12 GMT -5
By MARK BALLARD
mballard@theadvocate.com
Capitol news bureau
A study group looking for a way to regulate voodoo priests, traiteurs, shamans and other natural healers bogged down Tuesday over whether the state should license them like medical doctors.
Practitioners of alternative medicine probably won't be licensed, said state Rep. Sydnie Mae Durand, D-St. Martinville, who chairs the Naturopathic Medicine Task Force.
Instead, she is considering proposed legislation to regulate them and protect them from prosecution, Durand said.
South Louisiana's long tradition of relying on natural remedies to health problems almost was outlawed during the spring session of the Legislature, Durand said.
The task force is charged with drafting proposed law governing alternative medicine to debate during the legislative session beginning in April.
Historically many Louisiana residents may have turned to voodoo priests, traiteurs and herbalists.
Alternative medicine also includes nutritional interventions, yoga, prayer, meditation, herbs, even fad diets.
A National Institutes of Health survey of 31,000 Americans, released in May, found that 62 percent of U.S. adults used some form of alternative medicine.
During the 2004 legislative session, the Louisiana State Board of Medical Examiners, which licenses doctors, pushed bills that would have made it a felony to practice medicine without its license.
That legislation passed the House.
The bills were being considered in a Senate committee when alternative medicine providers discovered the language that would make them criminals when they do business.
Under the language sought by the medical board, a clerk who recommended a vitamin to combat, say, stress or tension headaches would have broken the law, said Conrad Adams of the Infinity Hypnosis Institute in Baton Rouge.
The clerk would have faced prison, large fines and the loss civil rights, he said.
"The language was the challenge. We were concerned that there was a potential to become a felon because what we do is technically the practice of medicine," Adams said.
Rep. Durand said Louisiana's medical establishment does not want to criminalize a historic tradition but wants to protect the public from quack medicine.
For instance, a federal court on Aug. 25 sentenced Gregory James Caton of Lake Charles to 33 months in federal prison for defrauding customers and skirting federal health laws.
His Internet business, Alpha Omega Labs, made $950,000 selling what were billed as natural remedies, according to federal prosecutors.
But the state medical examiners board had not fully considered the long tradition in Louisiana of relying on herbal, nutritional and other holistic approaches.
Durand said she hopes to draft a proposed law that protects consumers while not harming the centuries-old traditions.
"It was not a witch hunt that the Board of Examiners were going out to get people," Durand said. "There's absolutely no definition in the law at this time."
Durand said she herself has used the services of a traiteur, an old French word that Cajuns still use for a person who uses herbs to treat illness.
Durand said she once suffered from severe headaches, particularly when in the sun. But a Cajun traiteur in rural St. Martin Parish gave her a string to put in her cowboy hat.
"You know what? It worked. I still have that string," Durand said.
At Tuesday's meeting, naturopathic physicians who have attended one of the six colleges in the hemisphere that provide such training ran into opposition from traditional medical doctors and from natural medicine practitioners without the education.
The naturopathic physicians want the legislation to license the practice of natural medicine, which is licensed in 12 other states.
But Louisiana doctors argued that naturopathic physicians have not undergone 12 years of extensive, science-based training. Rather, naturopathic physicians complete four-year curriculums and in some states can hold themselves out as medical doctors that practice holistic medicine.
Naturopathic physician Jeanette Gallagher of Mandeville said she studied at the Southwest College of Natural Medicine in Tempe, Ariz., then spent two years practicing at a clinic on the Navajo Reservation.
Gallagher argued for the need of licensing, saying that the public should know who is trained and who is not.
Noting that Louisiana's rural parishes suffer an acute shortage of physicians, Gallagher said, "I could set up a clinic tomorrow. You have to let me help these people."
Gallagher said that poverty of rural areas can be helped by natural medicine. For instance, the prescription medicine for diabetes is manufactured from sugar cane.
"If they can't afford the drugs in the rural areas but they need to know about the nutrition and the herbs that will work," Gallagher said.
Other practitioners of alternative medicine want the legislation to allow natural medicine alternatives, provided that the practitioners disclose their credentials and their specialties.
"We want to make sure people have the right to choose, as long as they don't do so in a harmful way," said Samuel Bridges with Community Health Foundation of Gonzales.